


A Devil's Hunger

by LonelyLavenderBones



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Blood and Violence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Isolation, Mind Manipulation, Murder Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rey & Rose Tico Are Best Friends, Rural gothic, Slight insanity due to said isolation, Snoke Being a Dick, Soulmates, Supernatural Elements, Vampire Bites, Vampire Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-08-23 12:27:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20242843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LonelyLavenderBones/pseuds/LonelyLavenderBones
Summary: It's been three months since Rey Johnson's foster father's mysterious death in the woods on their property just outside the little town of Niima, Missouri. While the Niima PD closes the case as a tragic suicide, Rey refuses to give up on finding the truth about who, or what, ended his life.Ben Solo has lived a thousand years, growing more and more numb as the world changes around him. After her fails his sire, he expects nothing more than torture and madness to give him a reprieve from his cold existence. Instead, he finds the one woman destined to be his eternal bride who reawakens his body and his heart.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wanted to write some spooky, fun vampire nonsense so I thought, "Why not do it with a dash of Reylo?"
> 
> I would like to thank the amazing AKnightofWren for being my beta for this chapter. They are super amazing and I cannot thank them enough! I'm such a scatterbrain, so I need all the help I can get.
> 
> Spotify playlist:[ A Devil's Hunger](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/238utip5QsdXcGeI4E8v54?si=uSM2iv2NTMuM7_eGbf-EtA)

**Prologue**

Blood, lukewarm and crimson, flowed down Ben Solo’s arms, cascading down his pale skin before dropping onto the dark graveyard soil like rain. His hands tied above his head, he hung from an old oak tree as his sire paced before him, the elder's gaze sharp and calculating. Thin and hunched, the creature tapped the ceremonial knife in his crooked fingers, uncaring that Ben’s blood still soaked the blade.

At the edge of the clearing, he could see the silhouettes of his six siblings, watching the events with cold indifference.

Pity that even as life drained from him, he couldn’t die. Even as his fingers and toes started to grow cold and numb, his circulation slowing, he knew well that this wouldn’t end him even though he prayed that it would. The allure and glamor of an immortal life had long since fled him. Every emotion was numbed, and the world around him left him with nothing but the taste of ash on his tongue.

The only thing that awakened him in the slightest was the fight for his life after a perceived failure in the eyes of the man who had given him the gift that he longed to return. Pain and madness would come soon, chasing away the numbness that he resented.

“You are lucky that I don’t end your life tonight, boy,” Snoke murmured, his tone almost feigning a sadness that could never reach his sunken features. There was no remorse in the elder vampire’s heart, nor was Ben anywhere near being a boy. At nearly a thousand years of age, Ben’s boyhood had left him long before this night, and Snoke had been the one to take it.

Moonlight poured in silver rays through the thick canopy of trees, illuminating the old graveyard that they stood in. It was decently maintained, but just barely as grass rose six inches high.

No more than a dozen gravestones stood and about a dozen more laid in broken pieces on the forest floor, cobbled together carefully.

“You are my eldest child and the best of my brood,” he sighed, no doubt thinking back to the night they had truly become bond together. Ben kept his head down, pinching his lips together tightly as he refused to engage with the man’s ramblings. “I would hate for you to meet your end this eve.”

Long fingers clasped Ben’s chin, forcing him to meet his milky gaze. “Tell me, boy, why shouldn't I cut you from myself like rotting limb?” he hissed. “Fight for your life. You were always so good at fighting.”

“You have nothing left to take from me,” he forced a calm timber to his voice, but still there was the slightest tremble. “What more do I have than this life that refuses to end?”

“Oh, my child,” Snoke murmured as he ran his two fingers down Ben’s neck in a slow caress. He felt a cold blood smear down his jaw to the nape of his neck. “There is always more for you to lose.”

* * *

Ben could hear the soil shower over the top of the pine box as he started to thrash madly, his limbs chained to the sides of the coffin. He had been foolish to think that Snoke wouldn’t have just left him chained to the tree, draining until sunrise.

Everything was a game to Snoke. His impossibly long life was calculated, and he was always thinking more than a dozen moves ahead of everyone around him, ready for any possibility that might come his way.

Ben had expected death or a long night of torture. A night of being drained to weakness and a painful hunger before being forced to heal on nothing more than pig’s blood had often been a favorite of his.

What Ben hadn’t expected was being drained, chained, and tossed in a box that was then buried six feet underground.

Darkness had not frightened him for more than a millennium as it was the only thing that he had allowed himself to fully embrace over his long lifetime. Darkness hid secrets and sins, letting the shadows take him further into the hell he had willingly wandered into.

No, it was the smothering entrapment that came with this darkness that Ben feared. With the rhythmic thuds of rocks and soil ensuring his doom, he continued to struggle against his bindings, cursing Snoke and cursing the others for allowing their master to doom him to this prison. He was weak and pangs of hunger had already begun to wrack his hulking frame.

He wouldn’t die there in the ground and Snoke knew it. Either he would manage to find a way free and dig himself out of the ground or they would return when he was good and maddened and ready to beg.

Ben had never begged. Not for his freedom and not for another chance. He had taken everything he was ever given, even Snoke’s tortures, without begging. As he struggled, his mind clouded with madness without even a foot of dirt over him, he thought that he just might break.

The soft fall of soil paused and so did Ben, only for the silence to be broken with the thunderous booms two rounds of a shotgun.

_A human_, Ben thought dully as shouts filled the air, forceful and demanding. _And a reckless one. _

A few moments passed before the soft patter of dirt began to pound against the lid once more. The fight must have been quick, he noted, as he started to pull at his restraints. Because he could already smell the copper scent soaking into the soil. 

* * *

Ben didn’t know how long it had been since he had been put in the ground, but he believed that he had been screaming for nearly three nights. Nothing budged. The steel at his wrists remained unyielding and even the pathetic pine didn’t crack at his pulls. There had yet to be any reprieve from this nightmare.

Nearly a millennium old and he felt the beast of starvation with its claws at his stomach only after three days as if it was a newly made vampire welp.

If he wasn’t screaming, there was only silence which only made the confined space seem so much smaller. The sounds of chains rattling against wood or his foot scratching against the wood grain affected his sanity more than the raw soreness in his throat.

As he opened his mouth again, preparing to test his binds once more, his ears perked. For the first time in three days he heard something impossible, but at least it was something other than the sounds of his confinement.

“_No… nonono…_” soft whimpers like a chorus washed over him. Someone had come to discover the unfortunate man who had stumbled onto burial. Had despair ever sounded so beautiful?

A wail of grief shook him to his core, and he felt his heart begin to beat in deafening, measured pounds for the first time since he had turned to Snoke for power on the coast of the Black Sea nearly a thousand years earlier.

_Poor girl, _he thought numbly. _To find a body and to become a vampire’s bride on the same day._

* * *

**Chapter 1**

_Three Months Later  
Niima, Missouri_

There was a light on in the old Solo place. The archaic manor had sat vacant on the top of the hill for as long as Rey Johnson could remember living in the small town of Niima. It was nothing but the decaying beauty of a bygone era, white paint peeling from the wood paneling as grass grew higher the front porch on the austere home. She had watched as the sunset from her back porch so many times, entranced by the dark silhouette of the gothic architecture, and never once had there been a light on in the home.

Rey took another drag of her cigarette, savoring the flavor as she mentally swore that it was the last one that she would ever smoke. She knew, of course, that was a lie as she had about a dozen more left in the pack she had stuffed between her mattress and her bedframe. As long as they were there waiting, she would find an excuse to smoke.

She curled her toes and rolled her ankles, stretching the tendons as if that would relieve the dull ache in them from being on her feet for the last twelve hours. How she wasn’t collapsing into her mattress, she wasn’t exactly sure.

Instead, she found herself staring wistfully at the soft glow just across the field, an odd warmth stinging in her belly the longer she watched it. A thought, simple and pure, passed through her mind: a night walk was just what she needed. 

No shoes tonight, she decided as she took a final drag down to the filter.

As she leaned out the window of her bedroom, the night breeze brushing against her skin, she squinted her eyes for a moment as if that would give her some clarity. For a moment she thought that maybe she was mistaking fireflies for lamplight, but it was too bright and there was no tell-tale mating dance flickering. 

Someone had finally moved in.

The soft buzzing of her phone in her pocket tore her attention away. Pulling it from her slacks, she sighed softly at the caller ID on the cracked screen.

Rey felt her brow tense as she fought the urge to dodge the call. She had avoided the conversation for a few weeks with abating texts and emojis, but she couldn’t ignore another phone call. She had already let it go to voicemail one too many times. One more and she would have Rose Tico banging on her door with a shitty pizza and a bottle of blackberry wine insisting on a girl’s night.

Ever since she had put her foster father in the ground, company just hadn’t seemed terribly appealing. Pitying gazes and somber hot dishes had yet to fill the hole that had been left behind, nor had the soft promises of prayers and assurances that everything was going according to the almighty’s plan. How many pamphlets for the five Baptist churches in town had come with more than a dozen melancholy casseroles?

“Heyyy,” the word came out too bright and too hard. She winced at the sound of her own voice as she brought the cigarette to her lips again.

“Are you smoking?” Rose demanded, and Rey could practically hear her frowning through the receiver. How did she know? She always knew. They had been friends from the first day Luke had dropped her off at the local middle school in his struggling pick-up. Between the only person of color enrolled in the county and the weird foster kid living with the town’s local hermit, they had made easy friends in a class of fifty other kids. “I thought you quit.”

“When your dad is mysteriously found dead on your property, you’re allowed to smoke,” she replied, trying to sound unaffected. Trying to sound as if the image of his crooked neck and sliced wrists didn’t flash across her vision every time that she closed her eyes. That she didn’t see his face as pale as alabaster and tinged blue at his lips and around his eyes as he lay among the gravestones he had been tenderly repairing with the help of the local historical society. No, she was fine. Rey was always fine.

“Rey, it’s not a mystery,” Rose murmured, her tone patient with kindness that few had ever allowed her. “He slit his wrists—”

“Yes, because Luke Skywalker was begging for death,” she laughed, closing her eyes. The police had insisted that the cause of death was the buck knife that they had found in his hand. When she asked why he didn’t just use one of nine guns on their property to do it nice and quick, they didn’t have an answer.

Mental illness, Sheriff Pryde had informed her, didn’t have a logic and if she wanted a clean answer, she wasn’t going to get one.

“Before they decided he had… had…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. She wouldn’t repeat that lie. “Before they had decided that he went _that _way, they had said he’d been mauled by a fucking animal. There were no tracks and I know between me and Luke we hadn’t seen anything predatory other than coyotes and those stupid teenagers that like to drink by the river. Plus, he knows—knew… he knew how to take care of himself. Remember how he wouldn’t let me join the soccer team and sent me off for a summer of survivalist camp?”

“We’ve gone over this—” Rose tried to interject, but Rey was on a roll. Her mind filtering through files and folders she had managed to get from their small police department as well as everything she could gather on local wildlife from the library and online. Her chest ached as she thought about all the pieces she had, but she was unable to solve the puzzle.

Niima PD wanted it to be simple, but she knew better even though she felt like she was shouting at brick walls most of the time.

“He knew his land and he knew how to take care of himself… _Fuck._” Her voice cracked as she took a deep, shuddering breath. No one would listen to her. Something had happened. She knew it wasn’t a fucking bear or a wild hog, and it sure as hell wasn’t suicide. 

“Rey…”

“I know you didn’t call to talk about this,” Rey sighed, hoping to push the conversation onto Rose’s personal life. It was easier to listen to her talk about her online master’s program or gush about her sister, Paige, and her life in the air force. “So, what’s up? Is there more drama in the archives? Did they finally decide that you can handle the library and special collections?”

“No, they replaced Luke as head librarian with some waspy, overqualified asshole from England,” Rose scoffed. “Who the fuck takes a job in Nowhere, Missouri when they’re from _England_? Plus, he’s old school and absolutely tyrannical about it. He’s having me make the volunteers use cotton gloves to handle the collection, Rey. As long as they aren’t munching on Cheetos and have washed their hands before coming back, it’s so much safer for them to be using their bare hands instead of slipping with _gloves._ This guy is going to be the end of me.” 

_Oh, Luke would love this, _Rey thought with a roll of her eyes as she pulled herself back into her bedroom. _Being replaced by a complete and utter asshole. Was that in his will? Must have missed it._

Pausing, she left her arm hanging out the window, cigarette still in hand, cursing and twisting the bud out against the outside wall of the farmhouse before flicking it into the wet grass. She quickly pulled down the window pane and pulled the gauzy curtains closed as if that would hide the smell. 

It was all ritual at this point, sneaking a cigarette and hiding the evidence. No one was going to come barging into her bedroom at the first smell of smoke, but for a moment she felt as if she wasn’t completely alone. That maybe, just maybe, she would wake up from the nightmare that had been three months in the making.

Her eyes flickered up to the old manor across the field once more through the crack in her curtains.

“Did this guy buy the old Solo place?” Rey asked. “There’s a light on. There’s never been a light on.”

No one had lived in that house in the thirteen years she had spent in the little house with her foster father. For years, Luke had searched for a way to reach out to the owners to make an offer on the land. He had wanted to expand their property and make sure that the nearest neighbor they had went from the formerly vacant manor right across their wheat field to Sheriff Pryde who lived two miles down the road.

The man had liked his privacy just as much as he loved the quiet that came with it. Why he had decided to foster a ten-year-old girl, she had never been quite sure, but he had been the first not to bump her down the line to another family, and Rey was grateful for it.

“I don’t think so,” Rose answered with a short laugh. “He was saying that he was holed up in those shitty apartments on Main Street while he was looking for a place. _It’s a disgrace what these rednecks think these are proper accommodations._”

Rey stifled a groan.

“Jesus, Rose, you’re going to fuck this guy!” she sighed as she flopped back on her bed, already hating the man. “He’s your type. Completely arrogant, but prestigious... and your boss.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line before Rose simply replied: “Shut up.” 

“There’s this cute guy working at the Wafflehouse,” Rey offered, praying that she could end the bad idea that was forming in Rose’s mind before it even started. “Chewie hired him on for the summer. I guess he’s just out of the military and ended up here before he’s going to school in Coruscant or something. Maybe he’s here longer than just the summer… I was eavesdropping, so I really didn’t get the full story.”

“If he’s so cute why don’t you date him?” Rose probed.

“Because… I’m just not in a good place right now,” she answered weakly, knowing that Rose wasn’t about to buy it. Had she ever been in a good place? Bouncing across the state before finally landing in Niima had been a break from a life of people looking for a government check or hoping to save her immortal soul, but it hadn’t been particularly easy. “Besides, I have to get someone to look at what happened in the woods. There’s probably a maniac out on the loose.”

“When’s the last time you left the house that wasn’t for work?” Rose asked gently from the other end of the line. She opened her mouth, only to have it shut a moment later. “Not counting your ‘perimeter checks’ or going through Luke’s ‘bunker.’ Or Walmart. Walmart doesn’t count because it’s just about the saddest place on the planet.”

“One, Walmart is open twenty-four hours a day, so I can shop for groceries at three in the morning. Two, it’s not a bunker it’s a tornado shelter that I haven’t gone through yet,” Rey slowly replied, dread making her teeth hurt at the thought of what she was going to find down in the shelter. She prayed for expired canned peaches and bottles of water, but whenever she thought about going down there, she found herself hesitating.

“And three,” she continued. “I got his land in the will which means I have thirty acres to roam before I finally sell it. Why would I need to leave the property when I’ve got everything I need?”

“Because there’s no people out there,” Rose prompted. “Because you’re going to end up living in Niima until the day you die, alone and as a gas station attendant with an insanely boring life. Sure, town’s small but we can still go out and have a little bit of fun. Amilyn’s bar is going to have karaoke on Wednesday night. I know you don’t work Thursdays, so you can get fucking plastered and we can sing some Cyndi Lauper like no one is listening.”

“Fine…” she relented, smiling softly to herself. Her life wasn’t boring, was it? Working ten hour shifts only to come home to police reports and frozen bags of vegetables wasn’t boring… No one else was looking into Luke’s death, but she was. Something was out there. 

One night off couldn’t hurt, though, if it let Rose believe that she was starting to move on. “I’ll see you on Wednesday, okay? I’ve got to get out and make sure the kids aren’t drinking in the graveyard again.”

Ever since Luke’s body was found, there had been no teenagers in the old family graveyard buried deep in the woods on their property. Before, they had taken turns every Friday night to make sure they wouldn’t end up having to fix ancient gravestones and clean up cans of Twisted Iced Tea. No one had been buried there in years, but Luke had taken care of it as not to let it get overgrown and forgotten.

“You should really call the sheriff,” Rose said. “Have him look if you think someone is out there.”

“Sheriff Pryde can blow me,” Rey muttered, the mention of the man making her feel strangled. She started to kick off her slacks, stripping off her work uniform before she ended the call. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Tossing the phone on her desk, she threw a simple floral sundress over head. Honestly, she didn’t care what she wore as long as it wasn’t the awful black polo and ugly black slacks that the owner of the gas station, Plutt, insisted that she wear.

Leaning over her desk to grab her phone, she caught her reflection in a small mirror, and quickly fluffed her chestnut bob of hair with both hands. It had been an impulse cut, starting with cooking sheers in her bathroom and finished in the Walmart salon a few hours later. It didn’t look bad, she reassured herself one more time. It was just shorter than she had thought she wanted, but it wasn’t bad for what it was.

Shaking her head, she tried to remember why she had been looking down in the first place. Her hands felt a little light, but she couldn’t place what she was forgetting.

Taking a deep breath, she opened her door to face a dark hallway. It had never bothered her before, knowing that Luke was sleeping in the lazy boy in the front room of the house. Now, knowing there was no one else there, made the house suddenly feel as if it were filled with nothing but the void.

She didn’t turn on the light, not wanting to look at the portraits of Luke and his wife, Mara, smiling from happier times. The imagined ghosts that could be wandering the home were easier to face than the ones she couldn’t bear to take down from the walls.

Going out the back door, she was greeted with the soft creak of rusting aluminum and the slam of the wind forcing it closed behind her. The sky was dark, the bright stars hidden behind low hanging clouds as a soft fog started to blow off the river that cusped the property’s border. Her bare feet met the soft grass, drenched in dew as she started to walk down to the edge of the creek.

Her feet carried her quickly in the direction she was lead just about nearly every night since Luke's untimely death. The deeper she walked into the woods, the darker it got. Normally, moonlight was enough to illuminate the path that she had walked countless times before. That night, she was left blind and moving merely on memory.

Raising a hand to her breast, she realized that she felt nothing but tit… which meant she had forgotten to stuff her phone into her bra before she had left the house.

_Shit_.

She paused on the riverbank, glancing back over her shoulder in the direction of her home. It was lost in an expanse of fog.

Taking a tentative step forward, she knew she should go home. She should go home and grab her phone if she insisted on going deeper into the woods. Everything within her knew that she should, but she continued down the edge of the bank.

_Do I have a death wish? _she wondered as she listened to the soft roll of water lulling her apprehension into submission. _Maybe I do. _

She came across an old bridge and crossed it, knowing exactly where she was going. Every night she knew exactly where she was going, but she couldn’t get her feet to turn back and carry her home. Despite what she had discovered and the fear that always rose in the pit of her heart, she always found herself standing at the edge of the clearing where she had found Luke. That fear wasn’t something that she ever remembered until she was standing in the clearing, chilled and expectant.

“Nothing is going to be here,” she recited to herself. “Nothing is ever here. Nothing but old stone, overgrown grass, and copperheads.” She shuddered at the mention of snakes, but the soft rustle of grass caught her attention.

As did the massive pair of forearms digging themselves from the dark soil just ten feet from where she had found Luke’s corpse.

Rey ran forward, not thinking as adrenaline took over. Digging her fingers into the earth, she started to toss it away quickly before she grabbed onto the man’s forearms and started to pull him out from the dirt. He was freezing, she realized, no doubt from being buried alive without a shirt. Her eyes flickered to his wrists, frowning at the deep wounds etched in his skin. Carefully, she tried not to jostle him as he emerged from the earth. 

“I’ve got you,” she whispered as she found his face, giving him a soft smile as she panted. Brushing the soil away from his features, she felt her heart stop for a moment. He was an unearthly handsome in an asymmetric sort of way even with his manic expression, his dark eyes darting over the landscape frantically. Her eyes flickered to his body, well-muscled and lean. She only had a moment to let herself admire him before she went back to trying to help him out of the grave. “You’re going to be alright.”

As she gave him a reassuring smile, his dark gaze finally found a focus: her.

The intensity caused a shiver to run up her spine and her smile to falter. Her breath quickened and it wasn’t from the exertion of digging like a madwoman to free some man from the ground. Frozen, she didn’t make another move before he was on top of her, pinning her hands above her head with one hand and running his hand down the side of her face with the other, seeming to study her features.

“Get off of me,” she gasped through gritted teeth as she rose a knee to his stomach in a sharp jab. She expected him to grunt in pain and slump to the side, but instead he seemed hardly phased. The move didn’t seem to hurt the man, only annoying him like a gnat might annoy a sleeping dog. She started to writhe beneath him, hoping to loosen his grasp but it only became tighter and those manic, dark eyes of his seemed to shimmer with excitement. “Get. _Off._”

“_Relax_.” The word came out in a deep baritone, commanding and strong surrounded by a gentle thrum. Rey’s eyes went wide as she felt her limbs fall limp as he released her from his grasp. As his other hand continued to trace the planes of her face with a studied curiosity, he brought her form tighter to him. The touch was loving, tender as if he knew her. As if he had been waiting so long just to trace her jawline and pore over every freckle that dotted her nose. Her mouth remained open, a cry dying in her throat.

_Struggle. Kick. Punch. Scream… Anything. Fucking do anything. Pleasepleaseplease. _

She tried to force her body into motion, into a struggle, but her own will couldn’t seem to rise above his command. 

Her breathing began to slow as a heavenly sensation started to pour over her, making her thoughts heavy, her simple pleas a distant refrain in the back of her mind.

For the first time in three months, she felt relaxation flow through her body, and she should have been horrified. She should have been horrified, but all she could feel was pure relief coursing through her. His body pressed against hers, causing something in her core to flutter. He was all corded muscle and smelt of spices that she didn’t recognize, but the scent was rich and inviting, making it even harder to think.

Lips met the side of her temple and her eyes slid closed, as he pulled her even closer to him. Her arms rose without a thought, pulling herself even closer as she felt his lips trail from her temple gently down her jaw before rest at her neck just above her pulse.

“_Please_…” The word came out in a whimper, but she wasn’t sure what she was begging for. She couldn’t remember, but as he placed another kiss at her neck, she felt herself melt. A breath passed between them as he remained there, hesitating for a moment before he bit into her flesh… _hard_.

Shock rippled through her as she dug her nails into his back, needing to be closer to him as her entire body lit in ecstasy before panic washed the sensation away in a flood confusion. His bite was sharp, digging into her skin as she felt him lap at the warmth that had begun to pour into his deadly kiss.

“What are… what are you doing?” she breathed, torn between pushing away and leaning in deeper. Her head began to swim as black dots danced across her sight, obscuring her vision. “_What are you doing_…?”

The last thing she saw as her eyes slid shut was a streak of lightning breaking across the moonless sky.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jeez, people are thirsty for a Vampire!Ben, huh? Thank you all for your lovely comments! I really didn't think anyone was going to like this fic, but everyone has been amazing, so I hope I can live up to the hype? 
> 
> This chapter was un-beta'd.

**   
**

**Chapter 2**

Warmth bloomed within Ben as he pierced his bride’s neck, his frame quaking as the liquid hit his tongue like the finest wine after years spent abstaining. She tasted of untold promises and a lifetime of heartbreak, and he couldn’t imagine anything ever tasting as pure to him as this mortal’s blood as it slid down his throat.

Whether it was because of his time spent in the ground, drained and starving, or because she was his fated partner, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t find that he cared, the feeling of her nails digging into his back fogging his mind as he growled against the wound at her throat.

The songs of buzzing cicadas in the trees and croaking of toads at the riverside faded, the world around them was silent except for the soft tumbling waves of the creek and the sounds of the girl’s nervous breaths in his ears.

He had been desperate for her, maddened by her mere presence, and she had been there as he emerged from the depths of his grave.

_ I’ve got you_, she had said. _ You’re going to be alright_, she had murmured so gently that he had felt his chest ache, feeling solid for the first time that he could remember. No one spoke to Ben in soft tones of reassurance, and the sound of that warmth was nearly as intoxicating to him as her blood tasted. 

Ben had counted each time she had returned to the graveyard. It had been his only unit of measurement when it came to the passing days of unending darkness. Even six feet under, he had felt her return approximately eighty-seven times, and each time he had gained fleeting relief and rebirth of determination to free himself from his prison.

Before she had stumbled across the corpse left behind on the night of his burial, he had never given a thought to who his fated partner would be. It had sounded like a weakness, having someone so intimately tied to him. Once he had sensed her, though, he had wanted nothing more than to claim her; to make it known to her and any other that came across her that she was his.

Eighty-seven days had seemed like an eternity, the days and nights stretching longer than they had a right to as he struggled to reach her. When all thought had fled him near the end of his captivity, madness overtaking him, it was just the craze to reach the nameless and faceless _ her _ that was left guiding him.

The sanctified steel at his wrists and ankles had been the cruelest stroke in Snoke’s torture. The elder vampire was often fonder of using silver chains as it burned into the skin, melting it away until nothing but bone was revealed. He could have used that to his advantage, letting the silver melt away his skin to slip from his bindings.

Instead, the steel in its strength, and by the runes carved into the shackles, left Ben relying on his wits. Those wits that occasionally left him as the isolation gave him nothing but time to reflect on every sin he had committed in his long life.

His kind led lives of violence and betrayal, the political machinations between warring factions of vampires and other immortals had led to eons of bloodshed and heartache all while hidden from the curious eyes of humanity.

Oddly, what crimes he might have committed after his death had never haunted him as much as the ones that had led him to Snoke in the first place. Alone in that pit, delirious and emaciated, those memories visited him frequently like unwanted house guests returning day after day. He would have much rather dreamt of bloody battles that he had led throughout his eternal life.

Instead, only one death haunted him. One simple mistake had sent him reeling and the blood of one man had stained his soul far darker than the hundreds that would die at his hands over the years.

_ The blade running through flesh with a rough thrust. Grey eyes filled with shock and betrayal. Lips moving wordlessly, pleading and broken… _

He had been engulfed in his greatest mortal sin, looking for one break in that hazy nightmare.

His bride had been that break, her mere presence near the fresh grave a reprieve from the past that haunted him. She was something to focus on, quickly becoming the reason to escape beyond his impending madness.

In the moment in which he finally had her in his arms, he found that he lacked the clarity that he had saved him from the grave, struggling to pull his lips away from where he had punctured her golden flesh. There was so much that he needed, and he found that he couldn’t think clearly as impulses overtook him. 

He was lost, unthinking and desperate for every single promise that he tasted in her blood. There was power, untapped and ancient, and it made his head swim. 

Instincts warred within him, growing hard at the taste of her and the warmth of her lithe body beneath his. Starvation called for him to drain her completely and leave her as nothing more than a corpse, while bloodlust called for him to rut her like an animal right there in the cemetery soil.

The pounding of his newly beating heart rose above both of those primal drives as he felt her go limp in his arms with soft pleading whimpers.

_ Stop… If you don’t stop, you’ll kill her. _

As electricity sizzled in the air after a sudden flash of lightning, his fevered thoughts flooded back to the woman that was supposedly his. His breath went ragged as he sagged against her for a moment, trying to find a coherent train of thought.

No rain came even after the thunder crashed.

Ben wanted to believe that there was still something in him that was human, but even this bit of self-control seemed greedy. Desire to have her for himself rose, rising above the thirst that had driven him to pierce her in the first place. 

Running his tongue over the puncture marks, he forced his lips to part from her sweet flesh. 

Ben sat up, bringing his bride with him as he cradled her in his lap. Suddenly, he felt awkward like a child holding a china doll that could be so easily broken. Humans were so fragile, so fleeting. He had long thought them as lesser as his own humanity left him, but somehow, he would have to see her as more. Finding her lips to be dark and her face a stark white, he feared that she had already been broken at his hand.

As he saw her chest rise and fall with soft breaths, he worked his jaw as he thought. The taste of her was still on his tongue, calling him to return to the marks on her neck.

“Open your eyes,” he commanded, his mouth at her ear. When she didn’t, he lowered his tone and repeated himself in a harsh growl, tensing with an unfamiliar nervousness. What happened if she didn’t wake? If he had drank too deeply? “_Open your eyes. _”

Slowly, her eyes willed themselves open at his command, her gaze dreamy as she stared up at him. As unfocused as they were, he noted that they were like summer fading into autumn, sage at the edges and a warm umber around her irises flecked with amber throughout. 

The simple act relaxed him as he started to come back into himself, realizing what he had nearly done as she remained dazed. Still in the stupor of his previous command, he realized. That should have made things a little less complicated even if he wasn’t quite sure where to go from there. It would be easier to use his power of persuasion if she already remained in his power. As long as he laid out his words in simple requests, she would respond, even as she started to slowly come out from under the spell. 

“You _ bit _me.” The words floated from her lips as her brow creased, her tone more confused than frightened. As he ran his tongue over his teeth unconsciously, her brilliant eyes flickered to his mouth, and he felt her shiver in his grasp. “Your lips are… bloody… with…”

A trembling had rose to her neck and she winced. He wasn’t sure if it was at the wetness that remained or the pain of the bite. He had heard that a vampire’s bite could be pleasurable to certain people. It hadn’t been so with him, but he had seen some humans writhe and beg for more. He faintly wondered if she had liked his bite.

She had been persuaded to relax, but she had clung to him, digging her nails in to his back to get closer. If it had been truly painful, his sway would have been broken. He found that idea that his bride might like to have him at her neck erotic, the very thought arousing him.

“Tell me your name.” The pause between them was long as he waited, eager to put a name to the striking features and the haunting aura that had led him from the brink.

“Rey.” Her pink lips pinched in a brief defiance before her name fell from them in a gasp as if she were trying to swallow the sound before it could come out. Loosely, she tried to twist out of his grasp, but he easily caged her with one arm as his eyes flickered to the skirt of her dress catching on her knee.

Without a thought, his hand slid down her thigh to the hem, pulling the cloth up slowly as he took in the sight of her legs. They were long and slender, but he found himself frowning at the series of faded bruises that dotted her calf. Sickly yellows and greens splotched her otherwise smooth, sun-freckled flesh. The heat that had been rising within him started to fade but was smoldered to ash as he tugged the cloth to her upper thigh.

A series of tight white scars, each one no longer than an inch tallied her upper thigh. They were precise and thin and at his quick glance he guessed that there must have been at least a series of two dozen scars.

He splayed his hands, tracing a line with his ring finger.

“Rey,” he tested the name on his tongue, pausing as it hit the air, and decided that he liked it. “Where did these—”

He felt the flutter of wet lashes against the bare skin of his chest, wet and hot. The sensation broke him from his thoughts of exploring her as his gaze flickered down to her face only to see the slight crease in her brow and tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Why are you crying?” He felt his throat grow raw again, the sight affecting him in ways he only recognized faintly. When he rose a hand to catch a tear on her check, her hand came to meet it with a loose grasp as she tried to push him away. She was a fighter, he realized, unable to fight the intrigue rising within him.

Perhaps briefly he saw a flicker of fear in her eyes, but it was quickly chased away by frustration and fury.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, her voice breathy and barely rising above the distant rush of water. Her fingers were warm, and they were well worked and calloused. “I won’t die like this. I won’t die here.”

Rey glanced briefly to a spot on the ground, only ten feet away from where they sat. It didn’t take much more to follow her thoughts to the dead human who’d managed to fire two shots before falling. The rich red liquid had long been soaked into the ground and the scent had faded, but he knew it well. As he starved and struggled, the blood drenched dirt had mocked him.

“You’re not going to die,” he insisted, but the heat in her gaze didn’t cool. 

“Do you feel that?” Ben intertwined her fingers within his own before bringing the back of her hand to his chest where his heart continued to pound. “You did that.”

“What?” He could have sworn the amber flecks of her eyes brightened in a flash, but perhaps it was just shift of light as the clouds rolled over head, moonlight finally peering through their haze. 

“My heart beats for you,” he murmured at her ear, unable to help himself as he placed a kiss on the shell of her ear. Rey shivered against him, leaning against his broad body. Did her body recognize what her mind refused to see? That she belonged to him. “You’ve awakened my body and your blood has kept me from going over the edge.”

“You _ drank _ my blood,” she said, panic rising as her eyes found his lips once again. He fought the urge to lick his lips at the memory, instead running his tongue over his teeth once more. “You’re fucking… you’re fucking crazy.”

“Living nearly a thousand years will do that to you.” The words were tinted with a slight humor, but his own dread started to set in as he finally realized how she must have seen him: as a madman who had attacked her. That wasn’t exactly an incorrect assessment, but if that was her first impression…

Ben loosened her fingers from his grasp and brought his hand to cup her cheek, looking directly into her eyes as he felt the air around them change once more. Guilt spiked, but he pressed onward. A fresh start wouldn’t hurt, he told himself. They would both be better for it.

“This night has all been just a dream, Rey,” the gentle timber surprising himself as he stroked her jaw with his thumb as the hysteria fled her, leaving her as calm as she had been when he had been pressing trailing kisses down her jaw.

“Just a dream?” she repeated in a flat tone that made him miss the alarm that had just been there. He was worse than a madman. He was a monster.

“Yes, so close your eyes and _ sleep _.” Rey’s head lolled into his chest once more as he brought himself to his feet after securing her in his arms with ease. Was his home still standing, he wondered, as he started to trek back to the trail that he remembered led to the overgrown patch of land.

It had been two hundred years since he had last walked it and nearly forty since he had visited his estate, but he thought that he should be able to easily maneuver through the woods before the sun rose.

As he reached the old bridge, he was met with an unwelcome drawl, “Well, it looks like you managed to dig yourself out of that grave. I suppose I shouldn’t have put off my excavation for so long, but I’ve needed time to settle.”

A thin man approached with a shovel resting over his shoulder. Bright blue eyes under a shock of red hair met him.

“And you’ve had yourself a snack,” he smirked. “You should be careful with that one, _Ren_, it’s feral and I doubt it’s had all its proper shots.”

“Hux.” Fangs bared, the name came out in a snarl. At the name in which he addressed him or how he described Rey, he wasn’t sure. “You know her?”

“No, but she’s in my dossier of hillbillies to keep an eye on.” Another snarl from Ben, but Hux continued unphased. “Her daddy was the one your idiot coven mates killed when they were putting you in the ground, and she’s been making covering it up a bit of a chore…”

Hux paused as if first noticing the girl in Ben’s arms, and his eyes sparked with a familiar cunning that Ben hated. “Oh dear,” he murmured as his smirk widened into a glinting grin. “Is that the pitter-patter of your little heart that I hear?”

* * *

“_Sing it, Sam. _”

Rey woke with a start, her entire body trembling as she glanced around expecting still to be in the grips of the nightmare she had just awakened from. Instead, she was met with the gentle sound of jazz piano, the glow of black and white, and the slight squeak of the faded navy sofa beneath her. 

“_You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh _ ,” Dooley Wilson sang from the flat screen while Ingrid Bergman grew misty-eyed. “_The fundamental things apply… as time goes by _…”

The safety of waking should have soothed her, but her entire body shook with adrenaline as her head swam with a dizzy lightheadedness. Had she put _ Casablanca _on before falling asleep? It wouldn’t but the first time, but she couldn’t find the memory of doing so, leaving everything around her feeling slightly askew. From how she had laid down on the worn sofa to the old quilt that was draped over her; the one that hadn’t left the linen closet in nearly four years as it was replaced and forgotten.

The room spun as she jolted up, her stomach flipping just as Humphrey Bogart rushed onscreen to interrupt the song.

“_Sam, I thought I told you never to play—” _the television droned as her mouth began to water, a telltale warning of what was to come. 

Bile rose up the back of her throat as she dashed to the bathroom, pushing through the darkness as she collapsed in front of the toilet. Heaving, the only thing that came up was bile, her stomach empty. She hadn’t eaten when she had gotten home from work, penny pinching until she could settle the taxes she had to pay on the property.

Another wave struck her, and then another until there was nothing left in her, not even bile.

Her body shook with the aftershocks as she gripped the edge of the sink, pulling herself up to look in the mirror.

With trembling knees, she leaned on the counter as she turned on the faucet. She was pale, damp with sweat, and had a tinge of green that clung to her face. Without thinking, she ran a hand over neck searching for… she wasn’t quite sure, but whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find it.

Dipping her hands into the cool water, she splashed it on her face as she fought the urge to cry. There had been a man where Luke had died, coming out of the ground… He had grabbed her, running kisses down her neck before… Her hand found her neck again, dampening it.

The dream was nothing more than a haze, but as the fear started to subside the loneliness that she often managed to push away began to settle deep into her chest.

_ It was just a nightmare_, Rey chastised herself as she wandered back into the living room. She relaxed back onto the sofa, bringing the old quilt close before catching the slightest scent of rich spice that made her mouth water in a far different way than it had before. _ Or one hell of a wet dream. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, hopefully you guys are still into it... with the weird mind manipulation? I don't think this is going to go into Dark Fic territory, but if anyone thinks otherwise please let a girl know. I'm trying to teeter on romance novel and horror, so if I slip too far into horror please hmu so I can tag correctly.
> 
> Also, per a poll over on my Twitter, I asked if bringing in more supernatural/paranormal stuff would be cool. The option that won was, "Go full High Strange!" which means I have been given the permission that I didn't really need to have a little fun.

**Author's Note:**

> If you would like more of this... let me know? You can always find me on Twitter @womp_rat_fever and on Tumblr at womp-rat-fever.


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